


speaking out between two worlds (fire, walk with me)

by Metronomeblue



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Body Horror, Eldritch Abomination, F/M, Gay Male Character, Gen, I like to think Kate and Wilbur are both bi disasters who were like 'thank god a kindred spirit', Katherine Anders is just Jaime Lyn Beatty in glasses because I am doing the casting for this fic, Male-Female Friendship, Matthew McNamara is Corey Dorris- also in glasses, Misunderstandings, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Reunions, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Ritual Sex, Sniggles - Freeform, The Black And White, Twin Peaks References, Wiggly Wins, Wilbur Cross is Uncle Wiley, Wilbur Cross-centric, but it's not outright stated so, everyone gets glasses bc I'm a nearsighted bitch, extradimensional love stories hit the spot, it's a love story! kind of!, this is not necessarily a fix-it fic but it does fix Wiley a wee bit, vaguely??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: If you’re old enough to remember being a child, sitting cross-legged on a hardwood floor and opening a hollow plastic vhs case, you will understand the horror of being the tape. You will understand the sudden shock of your thin, clear plastic window being smashed open on the cold, hard ground. You will understand the weakness, the fear, of feeling something so much larger and more powerful reach into your broken-open mind and grab hold of your very being. You will understand the helpless, weeping horror of feeling your thoughts being pulled from your skull, unreeling like ribbon on a rack, feeling your soul being ripped away from its home. You will understand the abject wrongness of your memories unspooling, being tugged like magnetic filament tape from the well-loved places they rest only to pool messily on the floor.You will understand the distress and terror of being Wilbur Cross in Wiggly’s green, grinning hands.(or, alternately, Wilbur Cross and his fiancee- before, during, and after Black Friday)
Relationships: John McNamara & Katherine Anders, John McNamara & Wilbur Cross, John McNamara/Original Male Character, did we ever get a name for his husband? whatever his name is Matthew now, mentioned Becky Barnes/Stanley, mentioned Linda Monroe/Wilbur Cross
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	speaking out between two worlds (fire, walk with me)

**Author's Note:**

> Two notes- first of all.... this was... not what I expected this story to end up being. Second of all... Imagine Kate as Jaime Lyn Beatty. That's all.

“Oh, come on, now, we all know that love is highly overrated. It’s a two-way street. You gotta give up a little yourself.” The man smiled, empty and cold, and Linda wondered, wondered, wondered, because that was the smile of someone who  _ knew _ . 

That was the smile of a man who lost something to love and never fucking forgot. 

* * *

If you’re old enough to remember being a child, sitting cross-legged on a hardwood floor and opening a hollow plastic vhs case, you will understand the horror of being the tape. You will understand the sudden shock of your thin, clear plastic window being smashed open on the cold, hard ground. You will understand the weakness, the fear, of feeling something so much larger and more powerful reach into your broken-open mind and grab hold of your very being. You will understand the helpless, weeping horror of feeling your thoughts being pulled from your skull, unreeling like ribbon on a rack, feeling your soul being ripped away from its home. You will understand the abject wrongness of your memories unspooling, being tugged like magnetic filament tape from the well-loved places they rest only to pool messily on the floor.

You will understand the distress and terror of being Wilbur Cross in Wiggly’s green, grinning hands.

It’s no wonder he gave in, really. They hadn’t known. They hadn’t spoken to the thing in the dark. They’d only known that there was something- someone- some  _ thing _ in there, and that it moved, large in the darkness like a shark in shallow water, causing upwellings of power and distress. 

He’d told Kate he wouldn’t go in yet. She’d been worried, and of course she would be- she was the one manning the scans, taking the measurements, doing the calculations. He should’ve listened. But he’d wanted to know- to see what was waiting there, in the dark, in the Black and White, where ghosts echoed and spiderwebs of dreams lay dying. Wilbur had never really known what was good for him- his own mother had said it. Except for Kate. He’d known a  _ damn _ good thing when he found it in Kate. 

He missed her.

It was very dark, indeed, where he was. Lit only by the eerie green glow of Wiggly’s gargantuan eyes, Wilbur floated. Unspooled. Undone. Unmade. He was almost incorporeal, except he could still feel his body- the unnatural split of his muscles as they were pried from his bones, the sting of his skin being flayed from his muscles, the burn of his organs being juggled by a demented child god. He could still feel his memory, his mind, his soul, floating like ink in water. Tangled, now, because Wiggly didn’t know how to take care of his toys, didn’t know how to be careful. His memories were all mixed up, flashing from joy to agony to love to fear without pause or thought.

He wished he was dead, almost.

Almost.

_ Almost _ . 

But he wanted to live. Even as he felt Wiggly trying and failing to put him back together, even as his memories flickered, snapped and torn from his mind, damaged more and more every minute, he thought of Kate. Of John, his students. His job, and the duty that came with it. His country, and all the people in it. His memories flowed a soft golden, untangling, trying wind back into his head. He felt his heart strain, recollect, stand firm. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to  _ die _ . He  _ didn’t want to die _ . Not before he got to see John get a promotion, given his dues as the finest of their cadets, before he got to see the start of another year dawn blue and gold, before he tasted the tart split of a green apple again, before he got to marry Kate, put a fine golden band on her finger, before-

Wiggly pulled at his thoughts. He yanked them back out, so hard Wilbur could swear he almost felt them ripped from their source. His eyes flashed with static and pain. He could feel the violation, the pricking at the most intimate parts of him, the pulling, tugging, aching of Wiggly’s presence in his most dearly-held moments. The snap as his jaw broke under Josh Elliott’s fist in sixth grade, already crooked but now worse, Matthew Hall cowering behind him. The burn of breath in his lungs as he ran from a blazing gas station outside of Clivesdale, three PEIP agents waiting to take him to headquarters and throw him in a cell. The pride when he finished training, when he got his badge, the click of the trigger as he killed his first bystander, the heavy self-loathing of watching a six-year-old girl melt like wax in his arms even as he desperately tried to save her. The way his heart lifted each time imminent crisis was averted, the responsibility that hung around his throat every time he heard the national anthem. The way it felt to hear the word “Colonel” and know it meant him, after all this time, all his mistakes. The swoop in his stomach the first time he met Kate, glasses crooked on her face and smile shyer than a fiddlehead fern. The taste of her coffee, made fresh for him and him alone because she knew  _ he _ loved it even if she didn’t, the feeling of her hand in his, the satisfaction of seeing “approved” on the paperwork that let them stay together. The way she tasted, her hands curled in his hair- so much shorter, then- the warmth of her body under his, the softness of her heartbeat under his lips on her neck, the way his heart  _ ached _ when she said his name. The blinding, brilliant spark she lit in him- protection and duty, love and hope.

Wiggly was repulsed. More than that, Wiggly was  _ fascinated _ . He had never seen a full love before. Wiley knows that, now. Knows through Wiggly’s eyes that most people who wandered into the Black and White had passing loves. There were faint but strong tethers to family and friends, or weak, ephemeral connections. Worse yet, they had adorations, crushes, half-bonds that only tied strongly in one direction. They were easily severed, snipped and reformed into Sniggles, made into sycophants in Wiggly’s image. He couldn’t do that to Wilbur. Not that Wilbur knew that, at the time, but Wiggly was testing his strength on Wilbur. Trying new methods of pain and pressure, because Wilbur had more to bind him than most. His love for his country, his students, for Kate, tied him to his sanity. The threads that bound Wilbur were woven thick as spiderwebs, stronger than steel and harder to burn through. For the first time, Wiggly found himself at a loss. It infuriated him. It  _ excited _ him. 

Wilbur lost faith in being rescued far later than Wiggly expected. He believed in his students, his coworkers, Kate. Kate, who had made a study of the very place he now found himself, who had plotted and mapped the undefinable darkness with all the glee of a child let loose in a candy store. He believed in them- he believed they would come for him. He didn’t give up for many years, clinging to the bare sliver of hope that PEIP would be able to track his life signs. 

Wiggly informed him with no small joy that he no longer had life signs. 

Wilbur wept, then, cursing Wiggly and spitting rage, still hopeful. Still rebellious. Still Wilbur. They’d find a way, he told himself weakly. They’d find him. They wouldn’t leave him here. Kate wouldn’t leave him here.

“Ooh, he wuvs her doesn’t he?” The voice was painful, gurgling and cooing, soft and grating all at once. “He wuvs her sooooooo much. Would Colonel Cross like to see his pretty girlfriend again? Would he like to see her gusty wutsies pulled out like his? Would he like to see her pretty head all strung out like his? I could make tinsel out of her for you! Would you like some Katie-wait confetti?” 

“You’ll die first,” he grinned, mouth full of blood. Something about that particular jab invited real rage in Wilbur. And so he writhed, he fought, he struggled. It hurt. It hurt so fucking much it made him want to scream. But the thought of Kate suffering this, the thought that this thing could even  _ see _ Kate… it didn’t scare him. It made him  _ furious _ . It made him burn with hatred. “They’ll find you and me, you know that? They’ll tear you apart.”

“Oh Colonel Cwossy-woss… don’t you know it’s inevitable? I’ll have you. And then I’ll reach out and pluck up your Katie-wait and make you watch as I unravel her! Won’t that be fun? Won’t that make you all warm inside? Full of butterflies and happiness?” 

There was something cold, foreign, inhuman pressing into his chest. Wilbur screamed. Wiggly plucked at his threads like a toddler with a violin, and his mind fractured, played on in so many directions that it was crushed under the pressure. Everything went black, not even that horrible green light lingering.

He couldn’t fight back after that, no matter how he tried. Wiggly had snapped something vital in him- the thing that let him rebel was gone now. He tried, again and again, but his whole body seized, his mind went to static. Wiggly had taken that piece of him away. He wept, bitter tears that drifted steadily up to join his scrambled thoughts in floating.

Time passed so slowly. His body was reassembled, now. Wiggly had figured it out, but his memories were still tangled above him like a cloud of fragile ribbons. So thin, so precious. They felt distant. He wanted them back. He wanted them back in him. Wiggly plucked up a loose loop of memory and tugged, constricting the whole mess and yanking painfully at the backs of Wilbur’s eyes where they were still tied. Everything was knitted up, now, indistinct and unfamiliar.

“You have such good fwendy-wends, Colonel Cwoss,” the leviathan thing cooed, peering through his memories as if they were film for a camera. “Mister McNamara seems very fond of your Katie-wait doesn’t he?” For a moment Wilbur recoiled from the thought. But John was his student, his favorite student. Kate was going to be his  _ wife _ . He trusted them. He loved them.

“Shut the  _ fuck _ up,” Wilbur rasped, before Wiggly seized his throat between two fingers and squeezed.

“Now, now, Colonel Cwoss. That’s not very nice! I just wanted to let you know how nicely he’s taking care of her!” 

Wilbur didn’t believe him. He didn’t. He didn’t want to. 

“Would you like me to give you back to her, Colonel Cwoss? I could send you to her doorstep right now! Then you could sneaky peek into her window and see her with your good old fwendy-wend! Johnny just wuvs her so much!” The image entered his mind, unbidden, unwanted, placed there with such relish it hurt- Kate sitting at the table, John’s hands on her shoulders, his mouth on her pulse in a display of intimacy that Wilbur had thought was his and his alone, his hair feathering over her neck, her smile as soft and honest as it only ever was with Wilbur. Both of them half-dressed, familiar, domestic,  _ intimate _ . He could have taken it, maybe, if it had been anything but that. That gesture, that vignette, so tender where it lay in his heart, the same scene he’d so happily played a million times- the feeling of her throat beneath his lips, her pulse warm and steady, her hair soft against his cheek- it was the last sacred thing, to Wilbur. The final small sacrament he clung to.  _ Ah _ , he thought absently, before the last gossamer thread of love snapped.  _ Betrayal _ . 

Wiggly seized Wilbur’s tangle of memories in one monumental claw and pushed them back into Wilbur carelessly, painfully, like a punch through the head. He laughed, rasping, gurgling, and as love rushed out of Wilbur’s heart, Wiggly filled the empty spaces with himself. The truths of the universe, as told by Wiggly- the truth about America, about capitalism, about lust-driven faithless people, about wanting and needing and having. About religion and worship, and the Black and White. About how love meant  _ so _ little, beside power and chaos and profit. Wilbur Cross’ head was filled to the brim with cynicism and gleeful disillusionment, and he gasped out one final word before his mind shattered-

“No-“

And then all he knew was  _ yes _ . 

All he knew was Wiggly, high god and the master of his rapture, the judge and jury and executioner of the world. All he knew was gratitude, servitude, selfless, implacable love for the force moving beyond him, massive in the dark, like a shark in a shallow sea. All he knew was that the world should burn, and all his love with it.

Wilbur didn’t know that it wasn’t true. He might have, if Wiggly had shown him when he first arrived in the Black and White. But he was already so broken, so crippled by what he didn’t know. He didn’t know John was gay, or that Kate still slept in his bed to smell his cologne on the pillows, or that the only time John had held her in his arms she’d been screaming Wilbur’s name, reaching desperately for the portal to the Black and White, begging them to let her go look for him. He didn’t know that they ate breakfast together in the cafeteria every day, in companionable dead silence. He didn’t know that John still checked the scans for signs of him, or that Kate wore his watch every day. He didn’t know that it had only been _three_ _days_.

All he knew was that he had loved them and they had betrayed him. The only people he had trusted not to turn on him, and they had. The last thread to his own humanity snapped clean through. So when his new god and guide told him the other truths of the world, Wilbur lost faith in all of it. Coast to coast, man to man, he relinquished all hope, all love, all patriotism. Wilbur Cross died a bitter, painful death, and Wiley awoke in his place.

Wiggly feasted on broken dreams that night.

* * *

When Wiggly trusted Wiley to stay Wiley, he threw him back into the mortal world, spitting secrets into his heart and pushing venom into his eyes. “Be my voice,” he giggled. “You can spread my message of adoration, of love and glory! Tell them how to join us in Drowsytown!” And Wiley did. 

The man who had once been Wilbur Cross came back to the mortal world raving, spitting, screaming about god, about broken glass and green light and rewarded faith in the undying height of power. He was held down by six men, long limbs pinned to the floor and head thrashing back and forth. 

Kate wasn’t there.

It  _ had _ , in fact, only been three days, though it felt like decades to him, and Kate was on mandatory leave following her partner’s disappearance. So it was John he saw first. John, his protege, his student, his friend. John, whose image he had last seen in a perversion of himself, supplanting him, whose soul was still committed to the cause that Wiley had abandoned. John, who reached for him with a relieved smile and said “Thank god, Colonel-“

And then Wiley was clawing his fucking throat out. 

John McNamara was in the hospital for two weeks as his larynx stitched itself back together, but he wrote in a memo that the incident was to be kept secret. Recordings were to be destroyed, any records burned, anyone who was there sworn to secrecy. Not a peep. Not a single goddamn peep.

They told Kate it was a run-in with the Jersey Devil. They told Kate that Wilbur Cross was missing, assumed dead, and that he wouldn’t get a funeral due to the nature of his work.

Kate smashed her left hand through a glass wall, then left to complete her mandatory leave. John finished his recovery at her house, unable to speak, watching her fold a thousand, six thousand, twelve thousand paper stars. Jars of them covered every surface, full to overflowing. Each one a droplet of misery in Kate’s vast, unending sea. 

Two days in, Kate settled, sniffling, on the other half of the couch, her legs pressed up alongside John’s. She tossed him a washed-out jam jar and a handful of strips of paper. She didn’t say anything. John filled a jar. Two. He began to see why Kate found peace in it. 

“He wanted you to take his place one day,” Kate said, finally, twisting a strip of brilliant red paper into a star. “Wanted you to be the next one up.”

John said nothing, thinking of Wilbur’s eyes, wide and glazed with inhuman purpose. Thinking of his nails dug deep into his throat. 

“Wanted a lot of things,” Kate whispered, dropping the star into the glass jar with a echoing soft clink. “Suppose everyone does when they’re alive.” John nodded slowly. “He loved you like you were his own brother,” Kate said. John’s eyes were wet, all of a sudden, and he could feel her hand laying itself on his leg. “I’m sorry.”

If he could have spoken, John wouldn’t have known what to say. 

He held Kate that night, one arm slung over her shaking shoulder as they huddled, weeping, over jars of paper stars and cold cups of tea. It was raining, pouring, and the shadows of tree branches danced over them like ghosts. He had always liked Kate, of course, because she was soft and kind, and confusingly unrelenting when she wanted things done right. Because she was compassionate and thoughtful, but more than any of that… because she and Wilbur were so clearly good for each other, and John had seen enough bad relationships to recognize one built to last. It gave him hope, for himself, for the world. Two people that good, that kind, that clever, didn’t often find each other. And Wilbur knew it.

John had known Kate long before he actually met her, from half-heard phone calls and the smile on Wilbur’s face, from stories that Lee and Tern passed along with shudders, from the clever, incisive notes on the margins of his reports. He’d known her and liked her and loved her in turn for who she was to other people. 

That night he found he loved Kate for who she was to him. The way she was careful not to jostle the half-healed tears in his throat, the way she stroked his hair from his forehead like his mother once did, the way she whispered stories Wilbur would never have told him, even with tears still pouring from her. He found, for the first time, that he wanted them to be friends on their own level, aside from anyone else. He found he wanted to return the care she gave him, to hold her close and hide her face from the world and allow her a time and place to heal.

When his throat finally healed, months later, he returned to Kate’s house, with a jar of stars. 

“I have a boyfriend,” he said, apropos of nothing. “His name is Matthew and I met him at work, and one day I hope we can get married.”

“We can make garlands,” Kate said, apropos of nothing, and he stepped through the front door of the house that once been hers and Wilbur’s, and was now, lonely, hers alone.

Wiley didn’t see any of it. He was buried in Wiggly’s work, making twisted miracles and melting down dreams. He didn’t even recognize his own as he gave them to Wiggly. He felt vague tremors of joy from the dimension he once called home, and it sickened him. How dare they? How dare the world feel joy when it was this, when it burned and rotted and gouged itself into the dirt. How dare they, how dare they, how dare they, how dare they-

* * *

Kate and John made garlands out of the stars they’d made together, and when John and Matthew did get married, eight years later, the canopy of their reception was strung with thousands of paper stars on gold and silver thread.

“You’re a lucky man,” Kate said to John, apropos of nothing. John followed her gaze to Matthew, who was currently entertaining one of his cousins with a terrible, terrible dance.

“Incredibly.” He agreed. She pulled him into a very tight hug, and he returned it, mildly skittish.

“He would have been here,” Kate said softly. “He would’ve been so happy for you.”

“Would he?” John asked, hand going to his neck. Kate nodded. “I didn’t know if-“

“John.” She smiled, and though it was a sad, tired smile, it was genuine. “He would have been happy for you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“We’re not at work, don’t call me ma’am. Actually. Don’t ever call me ma’am.” John smiled, nodding.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she said fondly.

“Is this how it would’ve felt?” John asked, almost ashamed to wonder. “For you and Wilbur?”

“I hope so.” She watched Matthew, laughing, lift a little girl and twirl her around. “I always hoped so. He wasn’t convinced we’d make it to the altar, and I guess he was right.”

“What do you mean?” John’s brow was furrowed, his face suddenly stern. Kate looked back at him with a placid sadness.

“He used to say I’d leave him once I figured out what an ass he was.” She smiled, bitterly. “As if.” John felt something like guilt. 

He said nothing.

* * *

And then Hatchetfield. 

It was Kate’s hometown, was the thing. They wouldn’t have even known what it was if she hadn’t decided to check it- just on a whim. There was monumental activity in the Black and White where it crossed Hatchetfield, and it was growing stronger and stronger with each day. 

John started moving towards Washington the moment he heard. 

Kate went to Hatchetfield.

It was much the same. Same shops, same people, same small-town rivalries and the same big fish in the same small ponds. Kate tried not to feel the resentment she used to, tried to patch up old wounds enough that they wouldn’t upset her anymore. She passed Linda Monroe and felt a chill down her spine- a remnant of the primal fear of the poor passing the rich. It felt like being sixteen and afraid, but she smiled nevertheless. She had plenty of practice. Despite the swelling, ominous stirrings in the darkness, Hatchetfield seemed to be on track for a perfectly normal Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

That ad began circling a week before Black Friday, and the voice on the radio… the voice both was and wasn’t familiar. The song circled her mind like mice on a race track, kicking up dust, trying to knock loose a memory. And then she saw the ad, the face of her lost fiancé grinning madly from the television, and she stormed from her hotel room in a raging fit of panic and hope. While people began to line up around the corner for Wiggly dolls, Kate was speeding down an empty highway to the PEIP research station in DC.

Two days and counting. One day and counting. Black Friday came like a Molotov cocktail in a lumberyard.

* * *

John felt his body shiver, shift, snap. His physical form lost shape, his thoughts rippled in the darkness, his sense of reality severed itself from earth. 

He wondered if this was how Wilbur had felt. Not that it mattered. He thought of Matthew, and how he hadn’t told him to stay in. How he hadn’t left a note. His husband might never know what happened to him. He wondered if Matthew and Kate would talk, when he was gone. If they would share this monumental pain, this abandonment. His heart sank. 

He didn’t have to wonder what Wilbur felt anymore. 

Alone in the darkness, in pain. Aware, overwhelmingly, of the dangers surrounding him, driven on by the knowledge that the world depended on him. Everything was painful, flickering like static, dissolving and reforming. The Black and White was eating away at him. Radiation. Acid. Teeth. Gnawing at his every cell. He reached Goodman and Wiley quickly, nevertheless.

The Black and White didn’t suit Wilbur at all. He still looked half-mad, glowing with hatred and wrath, but something about him looked thinner here, more inhuman. His face as Wiggly’s spokesman was even more apparent. John still felt a pang, half-tempted to reach out and ask him to come home.

“ _ You- _ !” Wiley growled, all animal and hate. John met him evenly.

“You can do me no harm,” he said, and even as it proved true he felt like it was a lie.

“Well, now, John, why would I ever want to harm my dearest student?” Wiley’s drawl was pointed, sharp with meaning and resentment, jagged as glass.

“I don’t know,” he said gravely. 

“You knew. She knew. And she never so much as looked for me.” Wiley struck home, words ice cold and pitiless. “Maybe you don’t have the decency not to fuck with another man’s fiancé, but I’d hoped you’d have the decency not to lie about it.” He sneered. “Guess I was wrong again, Johnny.”

“You fucked his fiancé?” Goodman asked, confused, turning back to John. 

“She didn’t know,” John said, slowly. One hand reached out, placating, pleading, though his voice never changed. He paused, shaking his head. “Whatever Wiggly has shown you, you must know that it isn’t true.” His voice was unrelenting, unmoved. It galled Wiley, the bare fury of this falsehood devouring his patience. “She loves you, still. She always has. See the lie for what it is, Wilbur.”

“The lie? The lie? You call that a lie, and not this entire god-forsaken mess?” Wiley stepped down, all dismay and derangement. “Do you think that that’s what I’m angry about? The whole country is falling apart. The nation is burning, and you’ve just stood by and watched.” Wiley’s hiss was fever-low and simmering with fury. “This money-grubbing  _ fucking _ nation, John. This bloody, bloody, sick  _ waste _ of a nation. And you defend it?”

“Of course.” Wiley scoffed at John’s voice, so stalwart. So true.

“Can’t you see it for what it is?” He asked, voice thick with revulsion. “All the emptiness, all the greed, all the people little more than helpless, powerless maggots in the corpse of the nation- you really don’t see it?” John felt a pang of sadness, sharp and unwieldy, looking at the man whose voice had once filled him with pride.

“No.” Wilbur scoffed at his reply, laughing.

“You’re too late, John.” He leered, not at all the man John knew, lamplit in green, surrounded by roiling monstrosities and ensconced in Wiggly’s long, twitching tentacles. He looked scraped bare, waxy and pale, and a part of John ached for the person he once was. “The prophet has been chosen, and once she-“ there was a loud snap, and all three men rocked, thrown by the crackling, tumultuous entry of another person into the Black and White. “What are you up to now?” Wiley growled, pushing himself up to his full height. He peered past them, and the anger slowly slipped from his face.

Righting themselves slowly, Goodman and John looked up, and found Wiley staring, ghostly and cold, past them into the dark. There was a scuff, like feet in sand, and then a shadow crept across the violet-dark earth. 

“Wil?” A soft voice called, and the two men turned back to the path to the portal, where a second suited figure stood, dark-silhouetted in the faint green glow of Wiggly’s overpowering visage. “Wil.” John’s eyes closed slowly, half-regret written on his otherwise inscrutable face. He’d hoped she wouldn’t make it in before he could catch her. He’d hoped she’d never see Wiley. 

“General, what-“ Even as Goodman spoke, the woman kept walking, moving ever-closer to the madman and his towering god. A small, but notable twitch crossed Wiley’s mouth, his fists clenching by his sides, and John felt a burst of triumph. Not all gone, then. Wilbur lived. Even as a ghost, Wilbur lived.

“Why would you bring her here?” He asked, cutting off the president, voice dulled and cold. His eyes didn’t leave John’s once-familiar face, still twisted with shame. The woman kept walking, more and more visible in the light. John looked up, then, met his eyes, steeled once more in the face of Wiley’s cold fury.

“It was her choice, Wilbur.” His own eyes hardened with anger, tracing Wiley’s familiar, twisted image. He remembered when Wilbur had been a good man, sane and present and kind. He remembered the look on his face when he was preparing to enter the Black and White, thirteen years ago and so much longer. “She would never leave you.” Wiley smirked, grunted out a sharp laugh, half-bitter and half-vicious. John turned then, fully, to see what Wiley saw.

Even afraid, Kate was fierce. Determined, small, sharp-eyed. She had a strange look on her face, relief and yearning mixed with bitter, awful loss. One step, then another, PEIP regulation boots crushing inky stone with each footstep, she approached Wiley, completely ignoring Wiggly where he loomed behind his avatar. She didn’t look at John, but he knew an opening when he saw one, and he beckoned Goodman. Trembling, frightened, the man came. “Go back,” he advised the president. “You’ve done all you can.”

“But she-“

“He won’t harm her,” John told him. He wasn’t certain of that. He wanted to be, the memory of Wilbur’s voice glowing with love echoing in his head-  _ I can’t wait to see her in a white dress _ , and that crooked smile- but the way he was glaring at John, even with Kate standing before him, forced a cold jut of doubt into his stomach. 

She just looked, for a long moment, tracing her eyes over the changes in him- the length of his hair, the lack of scruff on his face, the cold, untouchable expression she’d never seen on his face before. “Please, Wil.” Kate stood, entranced, and reached one gloved hand up to her former fiancé’s face. “Please look at me.” He didn’t. It pricked a little at John’s heart, even knowing what he did, even remembering the way Wilbur had come back from the Black and White, screaming and spitting, eyes glazed with terror and whispering, gasping prayers to a godless god who had taken him apart.

“You shouldn’t be here.” He glared empty, violent daggers into John, not shifting his gaze even as she pressed a gentle hand to his cheek. He flinched at the first touch, though he resolved himself quickly. Kate’s palm was warm, even through the cold metal-thread glove, and it kindled a want in Wiley’s chest that hadn’t roosted there since he was Wilbur Cross.

“Neither should you,” she said, smiling faintly. Her thumb passed gently over his cheekbone. “It’s dangerous.” He finally turned his gaze to her, and Kate tried not to flinch back from his ice cold stare. Dull, unfeeling, he gazed emptily back at her.

“Don’t you touch me,” he said softly. Wiley reached up, eyes never leaving hers, and pulled her hand from his face. “Not you.”

“Wil?” Her smile died, and deep, fearful worry rose on her face. “What happened?” She tried to tug her hand from his grip, but his fingers only tightened around her own. 

“Not you,” he repeated. “I never expected it from you.”

“Expected what? Wil-“ He looked down at her hand, loose in his, and caught the glint of a ring. 

“Did you marry him?” He looked betrayed. “Did they even dig my grave before you were in his arms? Did you let my body cool?”

“They wouldn’t let me give you a grave,” Kate frowned. “They told me they didn’t find your body.” And then, almost angry- “The only arms I’ve been in are _yours_. So don’t you  _ fucking _ judge me, Wilbur.” She ripped her hand from his, even as his eyes widened and his anger melted into surprise. “I waited. I looked for you. Is it my fault you never showed up?”

“They didn’t tell you,” he said quietly, nodding. “They didn’t tell you.”

“They didn’t tell me  _ what _ ?”

“They knew I was here.”

“No.  _ No, _ they- they would’ve told me. They would’ve told me. Don’t you lie to me.” She looked back at John, bewildered, in denial. “You would’ve  _ told _ me.”

He looked her in the eye, ignored Wiley glaring at him once more over her shoulder. “I didn’t.” 

“Stay with me,” Wiley said abruptly, looking at Kate. 

“I can’t.” She shook her head, looking back to John, then to Wiley, then to the portal. “I can’t.”

“Kate-“

“I can’t,” she repeated, but he could see the tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

He stood, half-eaten apple in hand, gazing after her as she walked back through the portal. Everything was different, now. Everything would be different. 

He’d find a way.

* * *

Kate returned to a gasping Goodman, slumped over a crate and tossing questions at John, who looked somewhere between living and spectral.

“I don’t understand- why did he go mad in there when the rest of us didn’t?  _ You _ were fine! She’s fine!  _ I’m _ fine! I think!” John put his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes. They were all static now, dissolving and reconnecting. Fading into the Black and White. He could feel Kate staring through him, just like Wiley had. He sighed, swallowed, met her gaze. She said nothing.

“Wilbur went alone.” Kate’s gaze was condemnation, and John pushed on despite himself. “Just as you couldn’t be seduced by Wiggly’s power, neither could Wilbur. His mind was firm, as mine is, as Katherine’s is, driven by purpose and a stalwart spirit.” He nodded at her, watching the fury mount in her eyes. “To us, he was gone three days.” She let out a feral, vicious hiss. “He told us it had been years, between prayers to Wiggly and senseless screaming. The closest anyone could come to reconstructing what it was that broke him was that... Wiggly was forced to shatter him. Most people do it themselves, as you’ve seen.” He gestured at the debris outside, the riots. “But Wilbur was a PEIP. A damn good one. Wiggly had to take Wilbur’s psyche and remove its defenses, and in doing so he fractured it irreperably, perverting his love for his nation, his devotion to his duty and his colleagues, and his duty of protection itself. The only human thing left in Wilbur is his love for you, Kate, and even you can’t free him from Wiggly now.” John looked down at his hands, stinging with each molecular bond broken. “It’s time for me to go, I think. Katherine, I leave this in your most capable hands. It’s been an honor, Mr. President.” A salute, still dissolving. “I believe you still have a shot at saving this country.”

“Don’t you fucking  _ dare _ , John.” Kate crossed her arms over her chest, and through sheer force of personality managed to root John to his spot. “You lied to me. You lied to me for thirteen fucking years. You said he was gone.”

“He is.”

“No, John.” There was a terrible, manic glint in her eyes. “He was right there. I touched him. I spoke to him.”

“You spoke to his ghost.”

“I don’t care. If that’s what’s left of him, I refuse to give it up. I refuse to give up on him.” She slammed a hand into the doorframe. “You took so much time from me.” Tears were welling in her eyes, spilling over, and John felt guilt begin to gnaw at him. “I cried into your shoulder and all the while you lied to me. You knew where he was. You knew what happened to him. You knew I would try to find him. And you fucking lied to me.”

“All I can say is that I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough.” John felt the whisper of incorporeality begin to shake him. 

“I am truly sorry, Katherine.”

“Don’t do this to Matthew,” she replied, not looking at him. 

“I have no choice-“

“You always have a choice. You told me that every goddamn day, you hypocritical prick.” John smiled, despite himself. 

“I’ll see you again, Katherine.”

“You better hope so.” John faded. Goodman hyperventilated. She tried not to cry. There was a long moment of quiet, and then-

“Send the bomb through!” Goodman cried, and Kate looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“You can’t possibly think that that will work?” They looked at her as if she was crazy, and she couldn’t blame them, but- “He’s a  _ god _ . You think a bomb will kill him?”

“I think it’s worth a try.”

“Bombs can kill anything, right?”

“We’re all going to die,” Kate concluded to herself, watching her coworkers prepare to send a hydrogen bomb into the Black and White. “This is how it ends. Doing stupid shit that doesn’t matter. Astounding.”

* * *

They blew up Russia. Accidentally, of course, but the fact remains. Kate drove right back to Hatchetfield, radio dead silent, roads empty, rain pouring down. It felt like the end of the world, only it was happening every minute. 

When she got there it was dark- nearing midnight- and she stalked from her car to the hotel, muttering curses to herself the whole way. She happened to look up, properly look up, as she reached the edge of the parking lot, where a familiar man was leaned up against the side of the building, rolling a green apple between his palms.

“Why are you here?” She heard her voice break and hated herself for it.

“I thought you knew,” he said, regret and shame filling his face. “I’m so sorry, Katie. I thought- I was wrong.” She blinked.

“You were wrong,” she repeated flatly. “You help engineer an apocalypse, accuse me of cheating on you, accuse me of knowing you faked your death and doing nothing about it, help begin world war three, and you  _ were _ wrong? You are wrong, Wil. You are currently  _ being _ wrong.”

“It certainly must look that way to you. Not from over here. I’m doing alright from here.”

“Well, I’m not over there,” Kate said softly, trying not to sound sad.

“Come with me.” He looked like himself, almost. Softer. Less hollow. “Come back to the Black and White with me. I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt. I swear.” He offered her the apple, and it ached in her not to take it. 

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” There was desperation in his eyes, a kind of terrifying want that scared her. “Please, Kate, there’s not much time.”

“End of the world?” She asked, walking closer. He swallowed, shrugged. 

“Something like that.” She reached out and held the apple. Not taking it, just… holding it. Their hands were so close they could feel each other’s warmth, each of them holding half of the apple.

“I can’t leave,” she told him. Her eyes were sad. She looked at him like he was the whole world, but her eyes were miserable, and it ached in his chest. He leaned forward, taking one step into her space, pressing his forehead to hers, as gently as if she were made of glass.

“Why can’t you come back with me, Katie?” His forehead was cold where it was pressed to hers, but Kate only leaned further into it. “This fucking country will die. It’ll all become ash. It’ll just be melted plastic and wires. Come with me, please, Katie. Please.” She reached up, ungloved, and felt the softness of his cheek on her palm. He sighed, more human, more familiar, one long arm looping around the back of her waist. “Katie.”

“I won’t abandon them,” she whispered, fingers slipping up to his hair, pulling him ever closer, cheek to cheek, chest to chest. He released the apple into her hand and wound his other arm around her waist, too. She could feel the dead space where his heartbeat used to be, could feel the tremble of his hands where they touched her, as if afraid to press too hard and snap her in two. “But I  _ can’t _ abandon you.”

“You did,” he insisted softly, nose pressed into her warm shoulder. “You are. You’re choosing them.”

“You would’ve wanted me to, once.”

“No,” he says simply. “I was always this selfish. I’d have burned the world if it saved you.”

“Did it save me, Wil?”

“I don’t know.” They were silent together for a long moment, and Kate thought despairingly of how much she still loved him. It burned in her like a sickness, like radiation turning her bones to styrofoam and a hammer crashing through her small glass heart. Despite everything, she thought, still Wilbur. She looked past him to the apple in her hand, crisp green skin and cold white flesh. His favorite. Sour. She’d never liked green apples. Any time somebody tried to divest themselves of them, they knew Kate would be there and that she’d never say no, and she always ended up with bushels come harvest time. It used to bother her. It didn’t anymore, after she met Wilbur. She had someone to give them to. She’d stopped taking them, the last thirteen years. And here he was again, apple in hand. It burned away at her with a cold kind of dread.

“He’ll never let you go,” she clutched him even more tightly, fingers crushing his gelled hair, catching in his denim jacket. “He’ll never give you back to me.”

“Then let him have you, too.” His hands pressed to her clothes and pressed her clothes to her skin, and he could feel the warmth of her body- so human, so fragile- for the first time in years. He was careful not to hold her too tightly, feeling the crack-creak-ache of strength in his hands, careful not to bruise her, not to break her. Not Kate. “Come with me, Katie.” He pulled back, just enough to look her in the eye. “Let me save you.” She shook her head, even as he continued. “I can’t save them. I  _ can’t _ save them. Let me save you.”

“Would you save them? If you could?” He didn’t look away, honest as ever.

“No. Just you.” One hand crept up to cup her cheek, a poor mirror to her own hand on his face. He knew his hands were cold, inhuman, cripplingly strong. Unnerving. “Just you.”

“Why?” She begged, trying to pull away. “You hate me. You think John and I- you’re  _ ending _ the world. You serve Wiggly now, you’re not even Wilbur, you’re just-“ He didn’t let go. Even as she slowly crumbled, confused and hurt and still painfully in love with him, he held her up. She didn’t let go of the apple, even as she sank to her knees, held up only by his considerable strength. “Why even  _ try _ to save me?”

“I loved you.” He said it easily. As if it was so simple. “I could never let you die.”

“Don’t lie to me,” she told him. Tears were pooling in the cracks between his fingers, more of her weight leaning on his arm. “Please- don’t- don’t lie to me.”

“I could never let you die,” he whispered again, drawing her into his arms, into his chest. “Please come back with me, Katie.”

She clung to him, breathing in the faintest remnant of his cologne, feeling the all-too-real denim under her fingers, hand clutching an apple, trying not to break. He just held her. Her fingernails sank into the apple, breaking its skin, and she could smell the tartness of it mixing with the scent of him, the rain and the snow and the faint ozone-sharpness of the Black and White clinging to him. She felt unbound, untethered, as if at any moment she could turn to mist in his arms and disappear. It scared her. 

“I love you,” she said quietly. “I love you.”

“Stay with me.”

“Okay.”

* * *

Hatchetfield burned, a wasteland of ash and nuclear fallout.

Time passed slowly. Kate wouldn’t move, wouldn’t venture any further into the dark without him, so Wiley stayed by her side, never more than arm’s reach from her. Granted Wiggly’s protection, she didn’t need to sleep anymore, didn’t need food or water or breath. There was a fine line between blessing and hell, and she walked it unsteadily. 

He tried to help, but the only help she would take was his presence, his touch, curling into his chest like a frightened child, something in her fundamentally disturbed by the shift in her reality. Wiggly told him once, while she slept, that she’d cracked coming through. That her soul had fractured, leaving her vulnerable and lost. His heart weighed heavy in his chest, even as he stroked the hair from her face and whispered twisted comforts in the pitch black void.

“It’ll be just fine, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing her cheek. “You’re not alone.”

“We’re never alone,” she told him sadly. “He’s always watching.”

“That’s what gods do,” he told her, a little confused. She nodded into his chest, smiling a small, sad smile.

“I never liked that about them.”

“He won’t hurt you.” Wiley meant it, was the thing. He wouldn’t lie to her. Not now.

“Are you sure?” Her face remained exhaustedly sad, the faint, wry smile fading. “Do you really know, Wil?”

“I do,” he promised, cupping her chin in one palm and pulling her with an arm around her waist to sit properly on his lap. “This can be a dangerous place, but he- he’s keeping us both safe.”

“I wish I could see you,” she whispered, running one finger along his cheekbone. “I’ve missed you.” Wiley snapped his fingers, and a soft red glow lit the space around them. She made a small noise of shock, and he laughed. 

“Better?”

“Better,” she said, smiling softly, surprisedly. Kate ran her fingers through his hair, transfixed even now to see his face. Her eyes were wet. They hadn’t dried since the moment he pulled her into the dark with him, and it tugged at what he remembered. It hurt.

“They never told me,” she whispered. Her fingers stroked lovingly, fearfully over the crooked side of his jaw. “They never told me they pulled you out, or that they found you.” He felt rage, rage on her behalf, and it was quick but bright when it passed through him. “I thought- I buried you. I mourned you.”

“Moved on, I bet,” he said, and the gravel of resentment filled his voice. He looked sidelong at the band around her finger, just beside his eye.

“Wil,” she began reproachfully, and the sting of chastisement pushed down the bitterness Wiggly placed in him. Her voice softened, thin as gossamer, “I couldn’t. You were-“ her voice broke, and she stared up at him with a bewildering kind of pain. He knew. He knew. 

He kissed her, then, leaning in slow so she could stop him. She didn’t. It was a slow kiss, but heady, fierce and burning with thirteen years of dammed adoration, a decade of resentful love building in his chest and spilling over into the yawning void where she used to fill his life. She tasted like tears, salt sticking to his lips, and the cold winter air she’d breathed in, and slick, molten iron from where he’d bitten her lip bloody. He loved her. He loved her. He  _ loved _ her. Her hands were still cupping his face, gentle and almost fearful that he might disappear, stemming his passion enough to rein himself back in. He broke the kiss, breathing deeply, slowly, pressed his nose to hers and kissed the bleeding corner of her mouth. 

“You were the only man I could ever marry,” she whispered into the space between their mouths, and his heart sank, love painful and vindicated, bitterness beaten back, fury quieted with gentle, fearful faithfulness. Wiggly’s forced despair lifted a little from his shoulders, then, and the god felt his hold on Wilbur shake. The tie between them had begun to reform. Wiggly felt, briefly, panic. It made him angry. It made him  _ furious _ . His avatar would not abandon him. His avatar would not leave him for a mortal girl.

They spoke softly of the thirteen years, of John and Wiggly and the Black and White, and Wiley felt old bitternesses fade. Kate felt parts of her heal, knowing now that he was safe here, that he was, if not happy, not suffering either. Wiley was so far gone that he hardly remembered that he  _ had _ suffered. When Kate finally sank into sleep, fitful and uncertain, Wiggly summoned Wiley. Pulled him, with the force of his soul’s tether, yanked him by the breastbone to an audience.

“You’re not being a very good fwendy-wend, Uncle Wiley,” the god hissed. 

“Sir, I don’t understand-“

“Bringing your wuvvy-duv back with you was very selfish, Uncle Wiley. You wuv her more than you wuv me.”

“That isn’t true, sir-“ Wiley began speaking, respectful and imploring, but Wiggly’s patience was sore. Wiley felt his chest cave inward, and he fell to one knee, blood pouring from his mouth as he coughed and spat. “Please-“

“You belong to me, Wiley.” There was a very put-out edge to Wiggly’s voice, like a spoiled child lecturing someone for taking their things. “You’re just my voice box. A microphone. A servant. And you’ve done such good work for me so far! Don’t be a dummy now.” Wiggly’s voice sharpened, and Wiley felt his throat convulse, something rising up in it. “I would hate to have to snap your Katie-wait in two just to show you your place.” Wiley coughed, choking, and spat out a wedding band. He stared, empty-eyed, at the way it glittered in the pool of blood and ash on the ground. It had a flower engraved on the inside, an apple blossom, and Wiley stared and stared and stared, knowing that this was the ring Kate would have worn for the rest of her life. It was the ring he’d lost, on that first venture into the Black and White. 

“I saved her because I love her,” Wiley admitted, staring at the bloody ring, closing his hand around it, and Wiggly made a noise of offense. “But I brought her here because you need her.”

“What do I need from your pretty little pet, Uncle Wiley?”

“You got a prophet easy last time,” Wiley gurgled, blood welling up in his throat, ring clutched to his chest. He turned aside and spat it out. “But how much sweeter could victory be than if you snatched it from the hands of the truly good?” He watched Wiggly pause, tilting its strange, squirming head. “You need a prophet, sir. You need a fine, fierce woman. A mother to allow your rebirth. And I have given you... the finest woman on earth.” A piece of him died, even as he said it. Died rather than live on as the man who sacrificed his fiancé on the altar of Wiggly’s ambition, died rather than remain with this slow-rotting collection of memories. The rest of what was left of Wilbur Cross stood firm, deluded and deranged, certain that he was giving the woman he loved the highest of honors. 

“You brought her to me?” He asked, and Wiley could feel, through their bond, the strange, alien affection that rose up from the god. “To be my mumsy-wum?” 

Wiley nodded, grinning tiredly up at him, the blood staining up between his teeth. “She always wanted kids,” he told Wiggly, strangely sad. “Never will be a better mother. Not for you, not for anyone.” He wasn’t lying. He wished he was. But Wiggly could feel every emotion in him- his love for her, his dedication to his god, his disdain for the country he had once served with such fervor. His heartfelt belief that Kate would be a perfect prophet.

“A mumsy-wum for me?” There was another gargling laugh, and Wiley felt the pain in his body fade. “Thank you, Uncle Wileykins.”

“Anything for you, sir.” He breathed, and blood coated the back of his throat. Wiley stood, shaky with pain just barely banished and despair mingling with triumph in his heart. She’d be perfect. She’d be perfect. 

She was  _ already _ perfect. 

All he had to do was convince her. He wandered back to where she lay, sleeping peacefully, and stood over her, thinking. Sweet Katie, fierce Katie. Kate who never faltered before, refusing to so much as look at Wiggly.

“Wil?” She asked, reaching for him sleepily. “Are you there?”

“I’m here, sweetheart.” He dropped down, laying face-to-face with her. “I’m right here.” Her eyes fluttered open, still clouded with sleep, then blinked to alertness.

“You’re bleeding.” Her hands went to his face, tilting it back and forth, looking for the source of the blood. She sat up, and he couldn’t hold back a smile at the way she checked every inch of his face and neck and chest for the wound.

“I was.”

“Are you okay?” Finding nothing, she wiped at the blood crusted the edge of his mouth with her thumb, eyes welling with sorrow and worry. He looked up at her, happy to be the subject of her concern.

“I am now.” He smiled, hopefully convincingly.

“Who did this to you?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Wiggly... worries about my attachment to you.” He said it casually, hoping that would ease its way. It didn’t. Anger sparked in her eyes, then faded.

“I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“No. No, sweetheart, it’s all on me.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked down at him uneasily, less and less at peace with her choice to follow him into the Black and White. “I should’ve stayed in Hatchetfield-“

“No.” His voice went icy, dull with forbiddance. He pressed a palm to her cheek, thumb stroking the ridge of a scar on her cheekbone. “If you had stayed I would have dragged you out of there kicking and screaming. It’s dust now, Kate. It’s gone. I would never have left you there to die.”

“Why?”

“Because I lo-“

“ _ Why _ , Wil?”

“Because I love you. And because I had a chance to save you and still fulfill my plans.” She nodded, appeased by the ugly truth. Part of him was bitter. Part of him was glad.

“What plans?” She asked softly. He looked away.

“Wiggly needs a prophet. He needs a mother. Someone to help bring him from the Black and White into our world. And I… I know you, Katie. I know what you want.” She looked away, this time, eyes wet with shame. “Don’t.” He pulled her chin until she was facing him again. “Hey- Don’t. It’s not a bad thing to want a family,” he took her face in both hands, then. “I knew you’d be the best mother he could ask for.” 

“If we bring him into the world- if we give him a way out…. what will he do?” And the word we, the fact that she was even considering this of her own free will… that broke his heart a little. Wiley had grown used to temptation. He’d torn apart so many of the bad, the greedy, the selfish, the cruel. He had forgotten just how fucking  _ sad _ it was when good people gave in. He swallowed, pulled her into his chest so he wouldn’t have to see her face.

“He’ll tear down the wicked and cruel, Katie. He’ll burn the evil out of the world, and exploit every weakness in the bastards who run it. He’ll be fine. He’s just... a kid in a candy store.” There was something soothing about the way he held her, even now. It stung that even as a fanatic offering up the world on a platter, he was the only person who could make her feel safe. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t  _ fair _ .

“Like a kid in a candy store,” Kate echoed softly. “And we’re the candy, Wil.”

“No, Katie,” Wiley soothed her, running gentle, gentle hands through her hair. “We’re the  _ employees _ .” 

She breathed, for a long moment. Just breathed. The ever-present half-faded scent of his cologne, the sharp gunpowder of the stone they were lying on, the raincloud scent of the air in the Black and White, the sting of Wiley’s blood on the air. She thought about forever, about Wilbur on one knee fucking up trying to open the box with the ring in it, about coffee she hated, and making it for him because it ‘didn’t taste right when anyone else made it,’ about Hatchetfield, and ash, and John, and paper stars. She thought about the suffering of so many people, the bitterness of the world, the way she felt standing in it alone. 

“If I do this,” she whispered, peeking up at him from where her face had been buried in his shoulder. “Will I get to stay with you?”

Wiley looked up, as if asking for confirmation.

“Oh, yes!” Wiggly’s voice echoed terribly through the misty green-lit darkness. “You will get to stay with your Mister Wileykins forever!”

“Please don’t leave me,” Wiley whispered to her, and when she looked in his eyes she saw hope.

“I love you,” she whispered, deft fingers curling over the nape of his neck, into the thick denim of his jacket. “I do this because I love you.”

Wiggly felt the last solid piece of resistance in her soul shatter, leaving her a kaleidoscopic, glittering mass of sorrow and devotion. He crept into her heart, grinning, and helped repair her- stitched together her shards and fragments with acid-green thread. She and Wiley were tied, irrevocably, and Wiggly no longer wanted to sever that thread, so he reinforced it. 

He had everything he needed now.

* * *

“Whatever it is, you won’t leave me, right?”

“No,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Never.”

“It’s not some sort of weird virgin sacrifice, is it? You know damn well neither of us are virgins,” she said wryly. 

“Not a virgin sacrifice,” he confirmed, watching her settle down on a clean, flat stone. “It’s more… symbolic.”

“Are we going to have to hack glyphs into this rock? Kill octopi and place them on our faces to emulate him?”

“No,” he laughed. Sobering, he turned to Kate and fiddled with his dog tags. “I gotta warn you, though, this isn’t going to be the best time we’ve ever had in bed.” Kate flinched, confusion and betrayal mingled in her eyes.

“In bed?” She asked, and Wiley paused, tilting his head.

“I’m… I’m his voice, Katie. You’re his prophet. He needs… a sacrifice.” His confusion didn’t do anything to allay her.

“He needs us to fuck,” Kate said flatly. He stopped, moving towards her. 

“Well I wouldn’t say it as crude as all that, but essentially.” He knelt, looking up at her face, displeased and hurt. “I didn’t think it’d be that much of a problem for us. What’s this really about?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, far too quickly.

“Well clearly,” Wiley huffed, crossing his arms and leaning them on her knees. “Katie, please just say it.”

“You would’ve fucked Linda Monroe,” Kate said quietly, very purposefully not looking at him. Wiley felt his heart stop, briefly. Oh. He hadn’t considered the implications. At least, not in the knowledge that Kate and John had never slept together. The idea turned his blood cold, the same thing he had considered the very height of betrayal haunting him. “ _ She _ was Wiggly’s prophet. You would have-“ He shook his head.

“Would’ve been business, babydoll,” Wiley told her softly. He paused, looking up at her, before reaching up to hold her cheek and press a long, firm kiss to her jaw. Despite herself, she leaned into it. “It wasn’t ever gonna be pleasant, but at least with her I wouldn’t have cared. With you…” He turned his hand, stroking the knuckles down the side of her face. He stood, and when he began to unbutton his shirt, she saw the dog tags hanging, the scar where Wiggly had first stitched him back up now laced with eerie green. “With you I gotta be gentle. This isn’t a thing for the weak.” He looked at her with soft eyes, loving eyes, tinged with a mad kind of wonder, even as he so-casually stripped to the waist. “Linda Monroe would’ve suffered her way through it, because I couldn’t give a single fuck about her.” He shucked the jacket, the shirt, and tossed them aside in a sudden flurry of movement. Kate reached for the buttons of her shirt in turn before he made a strange, regretful hushing noise and stopped her hands with his, kneeling again. “With her it was just a requirement, Katie. Something I had to do. With you, it ain’t gonna be like that.”

“Why not?” She asked, as he undid each button, working his way down to her belt. With each one, he leaned closer, closer, as if it was an excuse to get near her. When he reached the last one he pressed his lips to her pulse, and he felt her physically draw into herself, press closer to him. 

“Because I love you,” he said roughly. “Because I owe you this.”

“You said she needed a doll,” Kate asked, folding her arms over her stomach, looking more unsure than he’d seen her in years- long before he’d even gone ‘missing’. “Why don’t- do I need one?”

“She needed a conduit to the Black and White,” Wiley said, taking her hands in his and unfolding them. “You’re already here.” She refused to look him in the eye. “Katie.”

“Mm-hm?”

“Look at me?” She didn’t. “Please, Katie.” Her eyes lifted under her eyelashes, then her eyelids, until eventually she was actually looking at him. “I’m going to take care of you,” he said solemnly. “I love you. I won’t let you fall.” She nodded, looking away again. Wiley lifted her hands to his mouth, kissing the back of each.

“Will it hurt?” She asked softly, and he felt Wiggly’s control rise up in him even as he nodded. 

“A little.” 

“You won’t leave me after?”

“Never again,” he whispered, reaching for her, hands tangling in her hair, the back of her shirt, now loose. Reassuring. Comforting. He buried his face in the crux between neck and shoulder, trying to hide the burn of Wiggly’s power behind his eyes. Even hidden, she could tell something was wrong, and she lifted his face to hers with delicate hands.

“Wil,” she said, fingers tracing the green light spilling from his eyes. “Are you alright?” He nodded into her palms, still leaning into her, holding her, pulling her closer as if she was the brightest star, the softest silk, the warmest sun.

“I’m alright,” he nodded. “He’s- I can feel him.” Wiley cracked his neck, shifted his shoulders, Wiggly’s presence trickling down his spine, through his veins. His mind bloomed with imagination, and his breath caught, his heart skipped. “The things he’s asking me to do to you, Katie…” She cocked one eyebrow, and a flash of smile crossed her face.

“What does he-“ her breath was pulled out of her, a rush of anxiety flaring as he pushed her back to lay flat on the stone. “What will you do? To me?” He smiled, like he used to, full of love.

“I will adore you,” he breathed, and bent to kiss her. It was a deep kiss, again, but a soft one. Light and bereft of the fury he’d carried for so long. Her arms twined, loving and shy- still so shy- around his neck. When he pulled away, smiling, she pressed a brief kiss to the tip of his nose. 

“What if I don’t want adoration?” She asked. He laughed, familiar and sweet even with Wiggly’s twisted, cold light glimmering in his eyes, his scars, his skin. 

“Then I will love you,” he offered, lifting one knee to rest on the stone, hovering over her so her face was properly even with his. “And when the world is remade, you will never walk it alone.” She tightened the loop of her arms around his neck, pressing her forehead to his. The glow, acid-bright, burned into her own eyes, reflecting, refracting, rebounding, like light in a prism. 

“Promise?” He kissed her again, and she gasped at the cold press of his dog tags against her exposed chest, unexpected and sharp, familiar and sad.

“Promise.” 

They kissed, and then kissing became undressing, and undressing became feverishly grasping for each other, desperate, lonely, estranged. They were driven onward by the push of Wiggly’s will, but they were still themselves. They charted the differences in each other’s bodies- Wiley’s green-laced scars, each bestowed with a kiss and a murmur of apology, Kate’s own scar tissue smooth and burn-shiny, traced with gentle, reverent fingers and gifted with a refrain of admiration. “Beautiful,” he whispered, stroking a thumb over the thick ridge of healing on her side.

“Blind,” she teased him. 

It was a curious thing, really, because she could feel the exact moment that Wiggly pushed his own consciousness into her, could see the world green-tinted and the Black and White as it really was- glimmering, alive with danger. She could see Wiley, his veins lit with Wiggly’s power, his soul shattered- he had cracks running through his body like he was broken glass bound up in ribbon. She lost control of her own body, her limbs and her mouth moving in ways that she couldn’t even understand, let alone recreate. Wiley was the same, their mouths murmuring Wiggly’s prayers in unison, their bodies twisting into a knot of limbs and fear and helplessness. She could feel him, and it  _ terrified _ her. She couldn’t move, though, couldn’t stop him, couldn’t beg Wiley if she tried. 

She bled so much, and the pain was narcotic to Wiggly’s presence occupying her body. She wept, sobbed brokenly into Wiley’s shoulder, unable to beg for mercy and incapable of wanting it. It hurt. It hurt beautifully. In spite of it all, there were brief respites, the smallest touches to remind them of each other. Kate’s fingers just a little too tight in his hair, her mouth whispering ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay’ into his collarbone, Wiley’s mouth almost kissing her pulse in her throat, his nose brushing hers in a featherlight reassurance. The moments when they forced each other’s names from their mouths, their own prayers to a smaller, kinder god. Wiggly pushed them together, forced them through the movements until they were both trembling and half-mad from sensation.

In the aftermath, bloodied and tired, Wiley held Kate to his chest, curled around her like ivy. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She could feel her blood drying on his skin. She shifted, pressed a long, tender kiss to the glowing scar that carved up his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“For better or worse,” she whispered, meeting his eyes with the kind of stubbornness that made him grateful for her. “I’m never leaving you again. I refuse to be separated.”

“Never,” he murmured in agreement, pushing a lock of hair from her eyes.

For the first time in all his years, Wiggly felt love, true love, through Wiley, through Kate, and like a child playing with dolls, he felt the fury of the unloved. He understood, by its absence, what they had stolen away with. What it was they had kept in their hearts for each other these long thirteen years. He felt it firsthand, as if it was his own feeling. 

He wanted it. He needed it. For all Wiley’s words to Linda, they were  _ his _ words. Not Wiggly’s. As Wiley and Kate spoke, murmured old promises and new, whispered wedding vows under a godless night, Wiggly felt that two-way street, felt the brilliance that Wiley had scoffed away for its burning him, the ache of trust that he’d denied. He felt the warmth of it, their desire to protect, to care for each other, their devotion to each other. 

Wiggly was repulsed by it. Wiggly was  _ ravenous _ for it.

Their sacrifice was enough- more than enough- for him to settle a piece of himself into Kate’s soul, just waiting for Christmas. Just waiting for the day when it would shred itself free and unleash him upon the world. He didn’t leave the Black and White entirely, just waited, curled up in her soul, weighing heavy on her. 

She suffered for it. They spent what felt like three days there, curled up in a knot of apology and healing, halfway between dreaming and waking, and even when they finally separated, Wiley’s hand remained clasped in Kate’s as she tried to wander away. They dressed slowly, painfully, old scars and new blending into an overlarge miasma of pain and misery. 

Kate felt sick. She felt as if she wasn’t alone in her own mind, and she  _ wasn’t _ . She felt nauseated, and her head ached. She swayed, overtaken by vertigo and lethargy. Wiley found a softer place, softer ground, and they curled up there as they had when he’d first brought her into the Black and White. Her head rested in his lap, his back pushed up to the slab of stone so he could see beyond, into the dark. She tried to sleep, forcing herself to dream rather than remain awake and in pain. Wiley kept her there, forcing out what scraps of power Wiggly had given him in order to let her drift until Christmas. 

She fell apart quickly, as Christmas came closer. The initial crack in her soul from entering the Black and White had widened and split open with Wiggly’s help, and though he’d patched it up once she’d agreed to be his prophet, his presence physically occupying her mind, body, and soul had reopened all her broken places. He was too much, too strong, and she couldn’t hold onto her sanity. She whispered and muttered, clawing at her face and scratching nonsensical prayers into the dust. She kept trying to wander out into the dark, and Wiley had to coerce her back to safety with soft words and gentle touch. It scared him, really, to see her so lost. But he loved her. He wanted Wiggly to succeed. So he did what he could. He let her sleep, pulled her bloody fingers from her cheeks and held her, murmuring, until she calmed. He let her weep into his chest, spoke to her of the future they’d have. He brought her water and pomegranates, hoping the familiarity might bring her some clarity, some joy. 

Once, clasping her to his chest, he thought he saw John standing before them. His eyes were so sad. He looked at Kate with such misery, such regret. But Wiley blinked, and he was gone. He tried not to feel abandoned.

Christmas came. Wiley brought Kate, shaking, to the very edge of the Black and White. She wouldn’t let go of his hand, swaying unsteadily under the pressure in her mind. “Stay with me,” she whispered to him. “Stay with me.” He nodded, reaching to hold her hand, to keep it in both of his. Kate walked with an exhausted, delirious purpose, winding her way out into the mortal world. She walked backwards, staggeringly, pulling him, keeping her eyes on him. Trusting him to watch her back. “Stay with me,” she pleaded.

“Always,” he promised, following where she pulled him. 

She stopped, looking very confused, very unstable, on the ashes of the Lakeside Mall. “I don’t like this place,” she said softly. Her hand went to her stomach. “I never did.” Kate gazed blindly into the rubble, still not letting go of Wiley’s hand. “I got hurt here. Badly hurt. It’s a terrible place.” 

“Is this where he wants you to be?” Wiley asked, stroking his thumbs over her cold, shaking hand. “Darling, look at me,” he asked, and she looked up at him, uncertain, unhappy.

“He wants to be here.” She fell to her knees, suddenly, and Wiley had to clench his jaw to keep from calling out for caution. Her knees began to bleed, jagged, broken cement and splintered, burnt wood carving into her legs where she’d fallen. He knelt, more carefully, still grasping her hand. 

“How did you get hurt here, darling?” He asked it not out of curiosity- he knew. She’d told him long ago, when he’d asked about the scar running across her left side. She had told him quietly, not looking him in the eye, as his fingers brushed over it again and again, all reverence and love. It had been a trial, for her, an offering of trust. The first, deepest intimacy she could offer him. This was different, colder. This wasn’t about discovery.

It was about reliving horrible pain. Opening something jagged enough that Wiggly could slip through. Wiley knew, then, that Linda Monroe could never have been the true prophet, despite what Wiggly said. There was nothing in her so painful, so hollow, that it could open a wound in the fabric of dimensions. She had never felt this kind of agony.

“He wanted to hurt me,” Kate said, empty-eyed and shaking. “He had been following me for weeks, and he pinned me down in the projection room of the movie theater. I worked- I used to work there. I was sixteen. I was small.” She began to cry, and Wiley hushed her, gently. She nodded. “I was so small. I was so afraid. He was undoing his belt when I- I kicked him back into the wall, and when I tried to leave he grabbed… he had a box cutter.” Wiley’s hands wrapped more tightly around hers, and he brought them to his mouth. It brought a flicker of a smile across her face, love offered and recognized. “He cut me open. I thought it was a threat, but he- he cut me open first. I didn’t think he wanted that too. He hurt me. I was so small, it wasn’t hard. He left me there, bleeding. They fired me for it. He- he knew where I lived. He tried to break in, but.” She bit her lip, tears filling her eyes. “But I wasn’t there. I was in the hospital. They sent him to jail for that. Not for what he did to me. What he tried to do.” Her breath caught, and Wiley again pressed his mouth to her knuckles. 

“It’s alright, darling.” She nodded at him, smiling, though tears still ran down her face. “Nothing in this world can hurt you. Not now, not ever.”

“I know.” She leaned forward, forehead pressing against his. Wiggly’s approval rose in her throat, physical, obstructing. He whispered to her, sharing things he knew, and she sobbed in relief. Wiley cocked his head, still connected by the touch of their foreheads. Kate laughed. “It really is alright. Because he married some girl, some poor girl who deserved better, and when she finally realized it she left him bleeding in the woods. He got what he deserved.” Her voice softened, then, rough with feeling. “And I got you.”

The laugh seized in her throat, and she gasped. Wiley looked up to see her bleeding from the stomach, as if stabbed. As if that old wound had reopened.

“Katie?” He asked, but a faint green began to radiate from the wound, and as he watched, a long, sharp talon pierced through the air before her. Not through her, but as if… the space where she was was some sort of liminal gate. Wiley released her hand, reluctantly, moving aside to allow his god to emerge. She bled, and bled, and bled, and bled, until there was a vast pool of red beneath Wiggly as he shuffled from the Black and White. He was somehow even more incomprehensible here, in the cold light of winter in Hatchetfield. All green, of course, with the giant, glowing eyes and the tentacles and the leathery, large wings. It was a bit like looking at a collaboration between Hieronymous Bosch and Escher- biological, but paradoxical. He made a noise a little bit like what a laugh might be if you had never heard one before. A death rattle repurposed for mirth, weaponized glee, violent schadenfreude. 

“Thank you, mummy,” a voice echoed in their minds. “You have served me very well! What lovely parents you are!”

“Oh,” Kate said, smiling, pale with blood loss. “Thank you. I always hoped I’d be a good mother.” She slumped forward, and Wiley caught her deftly. 

“May I?” He asked, standing, lifting her in his arms. Wiggly laughed, and made a motion with a wing- a hand- a tentacle- that might be interpreted as dismissal. Wiley nodded, bowed slightly, and stepped back into the Black and White as screams began to rebound off the ruins of Lakeside Mall. “Katie?” He asked, gently.

“Wil?” She asked weakly, trying to reach for him but falling short. The weight of her own arm dragged it back down, lethargic and emptied out.

“It’ll be alright,” he said, setting her down. He focused, reached out into the world, manifested a needle and strong surgical thread. He hushed her again, beginning to stitch her back together. “I promised. You promised, remember? To stay with me.”

“Mmhm,” she smiled faintly. “Love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said. “Stay awake, darling.”

“You promise you don’t love Linda Monroe?” She mumbled, head lolling back a little. “Everyone hates her. But everyone hated me, too, and you say you love me.”

“I do love you. And frankly, I don’t give a fuck about Linda Monroe, and neither should you, because she’s dead.” Kate’s eyebrows popped up, even though she was delirious from blood loss and the sudden return of her sanity.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Really really?”

“Mmhm,” he said, smiling a little. He missed a stitch and swore, doubling back to make sure her kidney was properly closed up.

“Who did it? Not you. You needed her.”

“Becky Barnes, I do believe.” He bit through the thread, moving on to her skin itself. “Shot her right between the eyes.”

“Hm,” Kate smiled, nodding loosely. “I know that techna- techinicha- technically,” she paused, struggling to keep her eyes open. “Technically, that’s a loss for us, what with her being the prophet an’ all, but,” she snorted. “Good for Becky.”

“Wasn’t she the one who-“ Kate nodded again, eyes clearing, face sobering. 

“Yeah.”

“Katie,” he said, closing the last stitch, and she made a noise of pain and childlike discomfort. It made Wiley retract, the thought of worsening her pain cautioning him. “Linda Monroe was a narcissistic self-important woman with not an iota of real worth in her. You are my fiancé, and the true prophet, and I love you. Do you understand me? I’m getting a touch tired of you acting like there’s anyone else in the world half as good as you.”

“Yes, sir,” Kate saluted, shittily. “Colonel Cross, sir.”

“Don’t you call me sir,” he chastised her fondly. 

“Okay, Wil.” She reached up, and he leaned his face into her hand. “Did we just end the world?” She asked, but her face was calm. Soft and serious, unafraid of the answer.

“Maybe,” he said, honestly.

“Okay,” she nodded. 

“Was it worth it?” He asked, despite himself. She smiled.

“For you?” Kate leaned up, kissing his cheek. “Of course.” Wiley felt a deep, horrible guilt. A startling regret. An unforgivable relief and joy. “The whole world, for you.” She nodded again, drowsy with pain and the release of a great, powerful tension. “Cause I love you.” He lifted her, easily, as if she was little more than air, and began to kneel down. 

“I love you, too,” he whispered. 

“I know. I’ve always known.” She blinked at him, even as he lowered her to the ground. “I just forget sometimes that you weren’t- you met me when I was better. Not when I was… when I was nothing.”

“You were never nothing,” Wiley said, smiling at her. “I’ve seen you through the eyes of god, remember? You shine.”

“Like Christmas lights?”

“Like the moon,” he said. 

“What about you?”

“I’m just a servant. Just a shadow on the wall.”

“No,” she said softly. “What’s the moon without the night sky?” Her hand was still on his cheek, and she passed her thumb over his cheekbone. 

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “Brighter?”

“No,” Kate said, frowning. “The darkness is nice to the moon. He holds her. He keeps her safe.”

“Then what is the moon without the night sky, hm? Since you have it all figured out.”

“Lonely?” She suggested. He turned his head, kissed her palm where it had laid against his cheek.

“Don’t be lonely.”

“I’m not. Not anymore.”

“Never again”

Beyond them, in the light of a cold, midwinter day, Wiggly laid waste to the world they had left behind. Before them lay soft darkness, an unending, uncertain future. Days passed, and echoes of the mortal realm rippled into the Black and White. McNamara returned. Kate caught sight of Xander Lee, and cried out, mournful, incoherent. Linda Monroe was conspicuously absent, but she recognized Becky Barnes, Tom Houston, that nice boy who wandered the Black and White calling for “Lex” and “Hannah”. It grew crowded, then conspicuously empty, as if all at once the spirits had been poured out into another place.

Time passed, as Wiggly wreaked havoc on earth.

They walked through the unlit world together, Kate still unsteady, but at peace again. The sniggles circled them, just out of reach, but Wiley noticed that where they once leered at Kate, now they drew back. Respectful, cautious- as if she had become elevated in their eyes. Perhaps she had. After all, it was no small thing to be Wiggly’s prophet, to open a gateway between worlds.  His hand tightened around hers, still unsettled by the ease with which she’d bent to this. He had wanted her to. He had coerced her into helping him. He had done this. He still felt regret.

Kate didn’t. When he looked at her there was a piece missing, in her shattered soul, in the same place Wiggly had torn himself from the Black and White, the same place she’d been scarred as a teenager. Wiley had an awful feeling that that piece would never return. 

But gods required sacrifice. 

“Are you afraid?” She asked suddenly. 

“No,” Wiley said. He looked down at her. “Are you?”

“No.” Kate looked up at him, smiling. “I’m never afraid with you.” It hurt beautifully.

“Onwards?” He smiled back.

“Ever onwards,” she agreed. 

Into the dark, hand in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> okay I gotta go do Quarantine Classes now bye


End file.
